


Who Needs Careers Advice Anyway?

by cabinet_captain



Category: The Mighty Boosh (TV)
Genre: Apologetic Vince, College, Established Relationship, Fluff, Kissing Under the Trees, M/M, Mentions of the Zoo, Sixth Form, Slight Voyeurism, Teasing, howince, slightly AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-11-20
Updated: 2017-11-20
Packaged: 2019-02-04 19:02:35
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12777468
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cabinet_captain/pseuds/cabinet_captain
Summary: Howard and Vince are in their final year of the sixth form, and they have it all planned out. Howard's even got them an interview at a little zoo in the city, and Vince is confident that if Howard keeps quiet he'll be able to charm his way into a job alongside his boyfriend and best mate.Despite this, the careers advice sessions are still compulsory - and are even more mind-numbingly boring for it. Vince tries to liven one such session up a little bit with some good-natured teasing, but as ever he doesn't realise that he might be taking it a little too far.





	Who Needs Careers Advice Anyway?

Vince hid his delighted grin behind his hand as Howard folded his too-tall body and sat on the chair opposite him with a sigh. He couldn't've planned it any better himself. The careers advisor was stood at the front, still droning on about whatever supposedly helpful exercise she'd devised for the class of nonplussed eighteen-year-olds, but Vince had long since switched off. Him and Howard had it all planned out already; they didn't need any help to decide what to do with their futures.

Howard, ever the organised one of their duo, had even got them an interview at a small zoo in the city despite their general lack of experience or relevant qualifications. He wasn't worried about the interview in the slightest - he knew they'd get the job. Howard always said what a charmer he could be when he set his mind to it, and Vince didn't doubt that he could flirt their way into employment. That's why they fit so well together; like jigsaw pieces, they completed each other and smoothed out each other’s rough edges.

"Vince?" Howard asked, pulling Vince back down to earth and reminding him of his plan. "Were you listening to any of that?"

Vince just shrugged, a display of indifference, and Howard gave an exasperated sigh. Vince knew he didn't mean it, though, because his face, bearing its trademark few days' stubble, remained soft and his little brown eyes were bright. Grinning mischievously, Vince slid off his boot and flexed his socked toes under the table. Although he didn't care for whatever pointless task they'd been set, he would be a fool not to make the most of the time.

"We've got to make a list of the qualities and talents that we have, and then try and relate them to jobs that we might be interested in working," Howard explained for Vince's benefit, although the other two students in their group seemed unenthusiastic. "Why don't you go first, Vince?" Howard asked, raising an eyebrow at him as he spoke.

"Okay then," Vince began, eyes sparkling as he reached out and touched Howard's calf under the table with his bootless foot. He tried valiantly to keep a straight face as Howard visibly flinched, clearly stifling the urge to leap from his chair and cry out. Howard shot him a barely concealed glare, but Vince just smiled sweetly back at him.

"Talents, Vince," Howard tried to assert, although the effect was somewhat ruined by the way his voice wavered when Vince's foot crept its way up to his knee.

"I'd say I'm quite good at multitasking, hey Howard?" Vince grinned wickedly at him again, winking lewdly as his foot inched its way towards Howard's inner thigh.

Howard's eyes widened deliciously at this, and he clearly didn't trust himself to speak evenly as he nodded his affirmation and scribbled something on the paper in front of him before passing it to Vince.

'What about the others?' It read, in Howard's signature untidy scrawl. Vince just shrugged. 'What about them?' He wrote painfully carefully, taking his time to make sure that the letters were neat and uniform while his toes wriggled against the soft flesh of Howard's thigh, before passing it back. Howard looked like he was about to have a coronary, eyes wide and face flushed with a mixture of embarrassment and arousal.

Vince's toes crept ever closer to their goal as Howard slumped back in his chair, giving up any pretence of trying to complete the task that they'd been set. It was a good job that the other two members of their group were so oblivious, Vince thought, because Howard's acting could do with some work. Even he, the self-proclaimed master of keeping his cool, was struggling to suppress the flush of arousal that came with rendering Howard so helpless in such a public setting.

"And Howard, what about your group over there?" Howard's eyes immediately shot open from where they'd fallen half closed with the effort that it had taken to retain some sort of composure in the face of Vince's wicked teasing.

"Um," he squeaked, pitched several octaves higher than his usual Northern lilt. The room erupted with laughter at this, and Howard burned impossibly redder under the ridiculing gaze of seemingly every one of his classmates. Vince's foot fell away from where it had nestled between Howard's legs, and he bit his bottom lip guiltily. He hadn't meant for Howard to be laughed at.

Vince wanted to say something, to step in for Howard, but he couldn't think of anything that would help the situation and so he kept quiet.

"I'm quite good at organising things, and sort of admin work," Howard bravely continued, his voice closer resembling its usual pitch, although his eyes were fixed on the floor as he spoke. "And Vince was saying how he's definitely a people person, and would enjoy a customer-facing job."

Vince winced at the blatant lie, touched by how, even after embarrassing him in front of the entire class, Howard was still thinking of him. It would've been too easy to admit that they'd done nothing, and probably land them both in detention, and yet Howard had thought them both out of the situation. He dropped his head guiltily as he continued to chew on his bottom lip, unsure of what to do. Howard probably hated him, now.

When the bell finally rang for lunch, after what seemed like an eternity, they both bolted out of the classroom. Neither of them was keen to stick around to face the judgements of their classmates, and so they sprinted as fast as they could through the labyrinth of corridors until they burst out of the door, into the fresh air. Vince was forced to slow to a jog as Howard ran on, feeling as if his lungs might burst. He watched the receding shape of his friend sadly, confused and upset. Howard always waited for him, they always ran side by side and sometimes even held hands if they were sure that no-one else was around. But, he reminded himself, he probably deserved nothing more than the treatment he was getting. Perhaps Howard had finally realised how thick he was, how little he understood the ways of the world. He'd just been trying to have some fun, to liven up an otherwise boring lesson. It was at times like these that Vince felt like he was a piece of a different jigsaw - one for children, with big pieces and bright colours and from a world with no consequences at all. Howard, on the other hand, was from a complex several-thousand-piece jigsaw that probably bore an image of a great battle or important historical event.

Vince had slowed to a walk before he found Howard, slumped with his back against the trunk of a tree and his head in his hands. His trusty satchel was discarded on the ground beside him, and its flap had fallen open to reveal his neatly indexed notepads and pristine textbooks. It was a world away from Vince's sparkly backpack, which more often than not only contained crumpled pieces of paper bearing endless doodles of the adventures that he'd get up to with Howard when they finally left school.

"Howard?" Vince's voice was soft and gentle, as if he was talking to a wounded animal, as he dropped his backpack onto the floor next to Howard's satchel and knelt down beside him. From this angle, he could see through the gaps in Howard's fingers that his eyes were red and puffy with tears, and his heart broke. "Howard, I'm so sorry, I didn' mean to..."

"What?" Howard snapped, sending Vince toppling backwards into the dirt with shock. "You didn't mean to take off your boots and you didn't mean for your foot to end up in my lap and you didn't mean to wriggle your toes every so often just to watch me squirm? I don't see how that can be an accident."

"Howard, you know I didn' mean it like that. I didn' know she'd ask you a question." Vince's eyes were glued to the dirt as he spoke, not daring to meet Howard's gaze. His thumb found its way to his lips in a subconscious gesture of discomfort and unease. He knew he was in the wrong - and that only made him feel worse. "I'm sorry, Howard."

There was a long pause where Howard didn't respond, and Vince was beginning to panic that he was being given the silent treatment or something and he really had crossed some invisible line from which he would never be able to return when he finally spoke.

"Come here, little man," Howard's voice was soft and bore no hint of the anger with which he'd snapped, and the fond nickname filled Vince's heart with hope. When he looked up, Howard's arms were opened and his face bore a tiny smile of forgiveness. Not needing to be asked twice, Vince crawled into his lap and buried his head in the crook of his neck as Howard wrapped his arms around his body.

"Thanks, Howard," Vince murmured into his stubbly neck, "I don't know what I’d do without you.” He felt Howard’s answering grin more than saw it, enjoying the scratch of his facial hair against his cheek.

“How about you finish what you started earlier, hmm?” Howard asked after a pause, and Vince grinned before extracting himself from his embrace to plant a soft, chaste kiss on his lips.

“Of course,” Vince grinned, rolling his eyes theatrically, “Your wish is my command.”

He burst into a fit of giggles as Howard stuck his tongue out at him like a petulant toddler, threading his hands into Howard’s unruly brown curls before leaning in to kiss him again.

So it would be alright, after all.


End file.
